Thanksgiving Extravaganza!

Ah, Thanksgiving! The beginning of the magical season of Christmas. We had a great Thanksgiving week. Trevor's parents drove to Provo from CA and were able to spend the week with the family. All of Trevor's siblings are living in Provo except for his oldest sister. We were able to see them almost every day and visit, play games, and eat good food. I must say it was really nice not to worry about traveling this holiday with it being so short!

Even though this week has been extremely stressful for me preparing a paper for submission to a journal, I was still able to find time to be with family throughout the week. On Thursday morning, we went early to Trevor's grandparents' home so I could "fix up" the gingerbread house I gave his grandparents last Christmas. It wasn't in terrible shape except for broken icicles, some fallen candies, and the back window completed melted off into a big clump of hard candy. At least it was the back window and not the front window! Trevor kept asking if there was anything we could do to fix the window and I told him, "no way jose". Well, I didn't use those exact words, but I told him there was nothing I could do. I couldn't even remove the rock hard candy gloop because it was stuck to the side of the house and cardboard (sorry I didn't take a picture of it). I actually thought it looked kind of comical, though I'm sure Grandma Aurora wouldn't agree with me.

Thanksgiving dinner was really nice. We had about 25 adults and lots of kids at Trevor's grandparents' home. Trevor and I made pineapple cheese salad and everyone really liked it. I was so proud of myself for not having any dessert! To be honest I didn't even crave it. I guess it helps to go "cold turkey" on sweets and never cheat. After dinner and dishes were done, we gathered together around the grand piano and some people got up and sang solos or duets. Everyone did incredible and it was so fun to listen to them. I love being part of a musical family!

On Black Friday, Trevor and I went shopping for maternity clothes and an area rug. I bought a lot of nice clothes on clearance that hopefully I can wear for a while! We also bought a rug we both really like and got it for 55% off. I've been wanting to get one for a while but couldn't justify spending the money on it. I have been waiting for Black Friday so we could find one that was a lot cheaper and still pretty good quality.

I'm looking forward to the next month or so! We are really excited to go to Arizona for Christmas and see more family! There aren't many weeks left of school!

Oh yeah, and GO BYU Cougars for winning against the Utah Utes today!!! :0)

Internet Radio

So this might not be new to anyone else, but if it wasn't for Trevor I would have never heard about it. There is this internet radio website called Pandora that Trevor and I really like. Basically you enter in a song or artist that you want to listen to and then it creates your own radio station choosing music similar to the one you entered. You can let them know whether you like the song or not and it caters the music to that as well. If you don't give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" on the song, then it just continues to explore new areas of music. If you leave it alone for too long, then it can really get off track (although the website has really improved this feature lately). It's kind of fun because you hear new songs that you may have never heard before. You can also add more artists or songs to a certain station if you like. You can also have lots of different stations like "Abba", "Celine Dion", "George Strait", "Jack Johnson", "Enya", "Yo Yo Ma", and "Jackson 5 Christmas" and you can change the station depending on what you feel like listening to. If you create an account, it remembers all your stations and preferences you have previously created.

Note: If you give too many "Thumbs down", then it will eventually just play the song you are on. You can only skip a certain number of songs (although I found a way around this if you click on a different station you created and then go back to the original station it gives you a new song).

Anyway, maybe give it a try if you like listening to music while you are on the computer or near the Internet. I have found that some artists give better mixes of music than others, so you may have to do some trial and error before you get a mix of songs you like.

Oh! And there aren't any commercials interrupting the music!!! They show ads on their website, but I don't even keep the window on the main screen so I don't notice them.

Californ-I-A here we come!

So after giving it a lot of prayer and thought, Trevor and I decided to accept the internship offer from Microsoft! He will start June 3, 2008 and it is a three-month internship. I don't know how we are going to handle moving with a brand new baby, but we will do it nonetheless. It will definitely be a whole new adventure for the both of us!

Surfin' Safari!

So what a whirlwind this weekend has been! Trevor kept asking his recruiter at Microsoft about when he is going to get a second interview. They finally put his request on rush and he heard back last Thursday. He gave them four potential dates when he could fly out for an interview-- Monday, Nov. 12, as his first pick. Turns out they were able to schedule an interview for him on Monday and he flew to Mountain View, CA Sunday afternoon. Here is a map of where Mountain View is located (it's right near San Jose), because quite frankly I would have no idea if I didn't look on a map! (Hint: Click on the minus sign to zoom out)


View Larger Map

He had four one-hour grueling interviews on Monday and then flew back Monday night to Salt Lake City. Of course, he impressed the interviewers so much his recruiter called him back today and extended him an offer to intern there this summer! It pays a little bit more than what Amazon.com was offering with practically the same benefits and it is SO much closer to both our families, which was one thing we realized last summer was important to us. Mountain View is about 5 1/2 hours driving from Trevor's parents and 11 hours to my parents.

So what would Trevor be doing this summer you ask? Well, he would be working with the PowerPoint team (about 26 programmers total) and they said he would be working on real projects (things people actually see). He also said the Microsoft campus there is really nice. While I can only imagine how incredibly expensive it would be to live there, I think this summer will give us a good indication of whether or not it might be a place we want to end up. With Apple, Google, AOL, Firefox, VeriSign, and Yahoo being right in the neighborhood, there are lots of possibilities for work.

So now we just have to pray about it and make the decision before Friday. I just think this is so awesome and I am so proud of him!

Nausicaa

So has anyone else ever felt the need to name their fetus? Trevor and I did because it didn't feel real to call our unborn child "the baby" or "it" (I also felt weird saying "he or she"). So we came up with the name "Nausicaa". It's from a Hayao Miyazaki film called Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. It's a Japanese animation film and a movie Trevor and I enjoyed watching. Mainly we picked the name because it sounded so much like "nausea" and that was all I could think about at the time. Even though I'm feeling better, the name has stuck and it's a little more real to us now. Although, I'm sure it won't really be real until Nausicaa's born.

Oh, and don't worry... we don't plan to give Nausicaa a Japanese name when he/she is born. :0)

Special Halloween Treat

In honor of Halloween, here is a really interesting edited trailer for Mary Poppins. It shows you how you can take a movie, edit it just right, put scary music in the background, and it makes the movie seem totally different. Trevor and I laugh really hard whenever we watch this because the movie Mary Poppins isn't like this at all!

Here's Scary Mary:



I've now had my "scary fix" for the whole year! :0)

Happy Halloween from the Florence's!

So Trevor and I have had some exciting things happen to us recently.

First of all, Trevor got into graduate school at BYU!!! Hooray! He will start his Master's program in January. We are so excited to almost be done with school. Two more years will fly by, right?!

Second, Trevor and I recently received new callings as Gospel Doctrine teachers. We are excited for this new experience. I've never had a teaching calling before so this is kind of a stressful but good experience for me. You always learn so much more preparing for a lesson than just listening to it.

Third, Trevor received an offer from Amazon to intern there again in Seattle this upcoming summer. He is also trying to get an internship with Microsoft as they are a little bit closer to family (Silicon Valley, CA), but they are being extremely slow about his second interview. He would have to fly out to Washington to interview and they haven't scheduled his interview date yet.

I know there was something else I wanted to mention... Oh yeah... I'm pregnant!!! I'm due May 5th and am about 13 weeks along. Yesterday we had a doctor's appointment and our nurse practitioner was supposed to hear the baby's heartbeat, but she had a really hard time finding it. She said I probably have a tilted uterus and the baby was in the back more. I came to find out this morning that both my sisters have a tilted uterus as well, along with my Grandma Black. It runs in the family... So lucky for me I got to have an ultrasound! I wasn't supposed to have one until 20 weeks, but they wanted to make sure everything was okay. Sure enough there is a baby in my tummy (sometimes I did wonder...) and we saw the heart fluttering at a normal pace. It was incredible! Seeing a baby move inside you is... I don't know how to describe it but I'm sure those who have had kids know how we're feeling. Anyway, Trevor and I were both very relieved that our baby appears to be in fine health. It made all those weeks with morning sickness (actually it was 24 hours/day) worth it!

Just to prove we aren't making this up, here is a picture of our ultrasound. He/she looks just like Trevor! :0) (Sorry if the picture is kind of dark...)